LA’s Cheapest Michelin Star Meal is Served in a Food Court

[bright upbeat music]

Holbox is a Mexican seafood stand.

We're located in a food court called Mercado la Paloma.

This is definitely the cheapest Michelin Star meal

you can get in Los Angeles.

You can get a $17 lunch special,

that is a ceviche mixto and two Baja fish tacos.

Or you could spend $100 on sea urchins and aguachiles.

We'll serve anywhere from 600 to 1,300 people in a day.

Being a chef and owner of a restaurant is demanding,

but I'm still cooking every day,

'cause this is something that I absolutely love.

Cooking is why I do what I do.

[bright upbeat music continues]

My name is Gilberto Cetina.

I'm the chef and owner of Holbox.

We're about to get started with our day, so, come on.

We're in the Exposition Park neighborhood of Los Angeles,

kind of the border between downtown and south LA.

This building is called Mercado la Paloma,

and it's home to both my restaurants,

Chichen Itza which we've had for 23 years.

Mom and Dad and I started it.

And our 7.5 year old Holbox.

[upbeat music]

It's about 7:45 AM.

Our prep team, they're actually here since six.

They're working on veg prep,

and just all the general prep of the day.

First things I do when I step into the kitchen,

I like to check our dry ager.

Our fish is in different stages of readiness to be served.

We come in and we see what's ready to go

so we can start mapping out the menu for the day.

We store our fish in a dry ager.

It's a fridge that controls temperature

and humidity quite precisely.

What we're looking for is to give the enzymes time

to break down the proteins into amino acids,

and this creates more of an umami mouthfeel,

a better eating experience when you bite into the fish.

When you store fish on ice, the fish stays really cold.

In reality, all that moisture is what bacteria loves.

So the idea is to hang the fish

so any moisture that's left on it is dripping down.

When we're checking the fish, what we're looking for

is just enough moisture loss

and the fish should feel really firm and plump

and we know that this fish is ready to cut.

We're looking for dryness, we're looking for the sensation,

how tacky or smooth the skin feels.

We're also looking at the eyes of the fish.

We wanna make sure that the eyes

have remained nice and clear like this.

As the moisture content drops,

the relative fattiness goes up.

If we put this fish to the grill right now,

that skin will just blister and get super, super crispy.

We'll be cutting into this guy 11 days dry aged.

So it's 8:15, our cevicheros are here,

and they're gonna start pulling down fish right now.

Cutting fish for ceviche, for the hot kitchen for grilling,

and I'll join them.

[upbeat music continues]

120 pound tuna, this guy. Local San Clemente Island.

Beautiful fish.

We're gonna get this tuna ready for bluefin tuna ceviche.

We're going through about three of these in a week.

We've already cut into this guy.

We used this part yesterday. This top loin

Bottom here, the belly loin,

is gonna be a little bit fattier.

This is a medium sized tuna, so it's medium also

on the scale of fattiness, which is perfect.

When they're too fatty

and you mix it with the lime juice, it does this weird thing

where the fat kind of congeals.

So these medium fatty tunas are ideal for us.

Alright, so this is what we're gonna work with

for our lunch service today.

Take the tail portion off here. Cut these rib bones off.

As a business owner, it makes a lot more sense

to buy this already processed.

It's not cheaper to do this.

It is cheaper to buy the fish already processed

and ready to go, but you do lose something.

We wanna be in touch with the food that we're preparing

and we wanna be executing the craft of preparing this fish.

And you know, take pride in what we're serving.

These are all the parts that we got out of the belly loin

of the tuna, and we're gonna cut some of it down

to have it ready for ceviche.

You always wanna make sure that we're cutting the fish

at a medium to large dice.

When you're working with fish like this,

it's not just the flavor of it,

but we wanna get that nice square pieces of fish

that you can really kinda sink your teeth into.

Alright, so let's pack this up. Tuna is cut.

All the rest of the fish is working.

Our deliveries are starting to come in

and we're gonna go receive them

and check them in the walk-in.

[bright music]

It's 9:30. Our first fish delivery of the day came in.

You know, as chef, owner of Holbox,

I do help the team make sure

that everything is a top quality,

be what we actually ordered, 'cause you'd be surprised,

a lot of times they'll do a little switcheroos on us.

These are our local abalones from Santa Barbara.

We're looking for abalones attached to each other.

That means that they are alive and very fresh.

And then we're looking, when we run our finger down it,

that it has a nice response and that it moves.

So we want these abalones to be alive

until the moment that we shuck them.

Very happy with this. Healthy abalone.

Strong abalone. Beautiful.

Here we have our bluefin tuna that came in yesterday.

Urchins in the house.

This is one of two deliveries that we get every week

of sea Urchins from Sea Stephanie Fish from Santa Barbara.

And some Maine lobster, beautiful Maine lobsters.

And these are gonna go into our tank.

With not just Mexican food, but ethnic food,

this is like unwritten price cap.

It should not be too expensive.

And what we decided to do here at Holbox

is to work with the absolute best ingredients

that we can find, regardless of what the price is,

and despite the setting that we're in.

[upbeat music]

A lot of fish coming in, a lot of prep to do,

we should be servicing about six or 700 guests today,

so there's a lot of work to do.

[upbeat music continues]

Right now it's 10:00 AM. We're here in the hot kitchen.

We're getting all of our prep done, cutting some vegetables,

getting our banana leaves ready for different things,

setting up the line.

I'm gonna set up the grill.

So we're really ready for customers

when they come in at 11:30.

This is a wood burning grill.

We use a combination of mesquite and oak.

And we have it with a Santa Maria style setup

with this big wheel here that we can raise

and lower the grates.

For us, it's really important

because we're cooking something that's really delicate,

specifically fish and lobster,

so we wanna be able to control the temperature,

because when you're cooking with fire,

there are no knobs that you can manipulate.

We control the temperature by raising

and lowering the grill surface.

The bed of coals is actually built

on top of construction beams.

We've built these doors onto them.

So as the fire starts going,

it starts heating up the the steel.

And this becomes like a little oven.

That's gonna take probably about 15, 20 minutes

to really get going.

In the meantime, we're gonna go ahead

and jump on some other things.

[bright upbeat music]

Gonna cut some octopus. This is our Mayan octopus.

This one is incredibly soft and tender.

It almost has like a cooked ham consistency to it.

We poach them in liquid and then we let them cool

in the poaching liquid.

Right now we're cutting the smaller tentacles

and pieces of tentacle for ceviche.

And then the larger tentacles and better looking pieces

have been separated for our Taco de Pulpo en su Tinta.

And those tentacles are to be fried up

to be served on the octopus taco.

This recipe was one of my grandmother's specialties

and it became one of my dad's recipes.

So when we opened up Holbox, I knew this was something

that had to be on the menu.

We modified it a little bit to kinda suit our needs.

It can be a little intimidating,

octopus in a pitch black sofrito.

So I thought if we offer it as a taco

and make it as approachable as possible,

more people will try it.

And that's what happened.

It actually became our top selling taco.

We use deli cups as a unit of measure.

It's a quart, right? We just call 'em delis.

I asked Miguel who brought the octopus,

like How many delis of octopus do you need

for lunch right now?

And he is like, Oh, whatever comes out of all that.

Octopus is done.

We do our eight course tasting menu Thursdays and Fridays,

and we have two seatings, six o'clock and eight o'clock.

And it's really a time and a place for us to just have fun

and really, really connect with the diners.

It's kind of our R&D time and space.

A lot of new recipes on our regular menu start off

as tasting menu experiments.

So the abalone, it's like one big muscle.

First thing is that we gotta shuck these.

We're gonna separate the abalone's abductor muscle

from the shell, just with a spoon like that.

And then we're gonna pull the abalone out

to get all of the intestines

and all the insides out in one movement.

And then here is our abalone shell.

It's gonna be an abalone tamales.

This shell is gonna be filled up

with our Yucatan style masa [indistinct],

and then steamed together, the shell and the masa,

wrapped in banana leaves.

So the abalones have a liver. This is it.

And it's like this conically shaped organ here

and It's green.

And when you cook this up it is extremely rich,

filled with lipids and fat and umami,

so we wanna remove this without damaging it.

We just pinch kinda the membrane that holds it together

and we pull it off like this.

There we have one abalone liver.

It's gonna be the basis for an abalone liver mole

that's gonna be used to top this tamales.

This frill here is gonna be used for the stock

in making abalone mole.

So the next step after trimming it and cleaning it

is tenderizing it.

Right now the abalone is super tight

because we just shucked it out of its shell

and gave it a haircut.

Give it a few taps

and then we're gonna put it off to the side to rest again.

If we keep hitting this one and tenderizing it,

it's so tight, it will eventually break.

So we have to do it kind of in stages.

Do it a little bit at a time

and then let it relax and then go again.

And this is a marinade that we make with a vegetable sofrito

and soy sauce, dry red chiles, olive oil, and lemon juice.

All right, so we're gonna take this to the vacuum sealer.

These are gonna be ready

for assembling our tamales tomorrow.

So it's five minutes till 11.

We're getting ready to break for family meal.

We all gonna sit down and have a quick lunch

before we open up at 11:30 for service.

[bright music]

It's 11:30. We're just opening.

I'll be taking my position here at the ceviche bar.

We got our station all ready to go.

We're gonna be cracking sea urchins, doing oysters, clams,

cocteles and aguachiles at this station,

while the team takes care of ceviches over there,

and the hot kitchen is doing tacos

and our wood grilled entrees.

There's two types of service here at Holbox.

You either stand in line, order at the register,

get a number, and then service comes to the table.

The other one is you sit here at the ceviche bar.

We'll take your order at the bar

and you can even order with the cevicheros.

This is the Santa Barbara red sea urchin

that we just received.

We wanna use this as quickly as we can.

These are beautiful right now.

They're alive and moving and thriving.

We're getting rid of everything

except the reproductive system,

which is what we eat on a sea urchin, we know as uni,

and they're actually the gonads of the urchin.

And we're gonna make a quick little ceviche

with Baja Bay scallops and then that's it.

Scallop ceviche goes inside the urchin shell.

This is a little pea sprout

that we grow here in the restaurant.

And a little bit of our avocado cucumber puree.

We've been working at the ceviche bar for a minute.

Things are calming down here.

I think the rest of the team have it under control.

I'm gonna jump over into the hot kitchen

and see what they need over there.

[bright music]

It's around one o'clock.

We've got four people on the hotline right now,

one person doing tortillas, and about four people on prep.

Just kind of replenishing what we need

and doing preparation for dinner service.

So that's out, we need two to go. One, two.

With the grill, we've got some branzinos that are cooking.

We've got our order of Pulpo a las Brasas,

which is the octopus.

Some kanpachi collars also grilling, and [indistinct],

so a lot of orders in the works.

These are all the orders,

as they're coming in for the hot kitchen,

I'm seeing both tacos and orders for the grill

so we can make sure they're coming out at the same time.

We don't really need to talk a lot in the kitchen.

Everybody's keeping an eye on what everybody else is doing

and we're synchronizing to make sure

that the orders come out at the same time.

The color of the tab on the screen is just an indication

of how long the order's been in.

So if an order gets to red, it means it's urgent.

This is a pretty calm service.

It's fast paced, but all of our tickets are black.

We got it. We got it under control.

Here we're gonna be plating one of the lighter plates,

lower price points, very popular for lunch.

It's our Filete al Carbon, some pico de gallo and avocado,

cilantro, poblano rice, some black beans,

and a little filet of branzino.

Our average ticket for lunch is $24.

The Michelin Star had a pretty big impact.

To be honest with you,

it's only been getting busier and busier every week.

I don't know where this is gonna land,

but you know, we are prepared and very motivated,

very happy to continue serving more and more customers.

So it's around two o'clock.

The hot kitchen has been doing well.

I think they have it all under control.

In the afternoon, we still have to get more fish

scaled and gutted, we have to filet more fish, steam crabs.

I think we're gonna get another round of octopus going.

Really, really busy afternoon.

We gotta get a lot of that stuff done

before the crowds come in again for dinner.

So I'm out of here. I gotta get to work.

[bright music]